No to Everybody

With 73 parties to choose from, Italy's general elections last week seemed to offer something for every political shopper. The candidates represented all political brands from neo-Fascism to Communism. Yet, obliged by law to go to the polls, 1,000,000 Italians rejected the lot and cast blank ballots--the highest no-to-everybody vote ever registered in Italy. Amid all the statistics to come out of the election, this was the most easily understood, and perhaps the most significant.

Those voters who did mark their ballots returned to power Premier Aldo Moro's five-year-old Center-Left coalition with an increased majority of 51 in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies. The Christian Democrats gained six new seats from extreme right-wing parties, and the Republicans, the smallest partner in the ruling coalition, went from five seats to nine.

But pity the poor Socialists. They always seem to get into trouble when they move out of the old ideologist neighborhood and associate with Center parties. Even more than Willy Brandt's Socialists in West Germany's recent state elections, Pietro Nenni's Socialist Party suffered a serious setback in the Italian elections.

Miracle Without Fizz. Onetime Marxist Nenni had struck a courageous and dangerous bargain five years ago when he took his Socialist Party into a Center-Left coalition with Italy's dominant Christian Democrats. Hoping to move the Christian Democrats to do far more for Italy's middle-class and poor citizens, Nenni cut his ties with the powerful Communist Party, merged with the moderate Social Democrats, abandoned his opposition to Italy's participation in NATO, and even took an "understanding" position toward the U.S. role in Viet Nam. In return, the Christian Democrats promised improvements in housing, higher education, pensions and social welfare, and reform of Italy's cosseted bureaucracy.

They kept part of those promises. But as it turned out, Nenni, now 77, gave far more than he got. The Italian economy lost its fizz, and the Socialists found themselves forced to support their big coalition partner in a series of effective but unpopular anti-inflationary curbs that pinched consumer pocketbooks and cut back government expenditures on the promised social reforms. His United Socialists paid the price at the polls, winding up with a significantly reduced slice of Italy's political pizza (see chart).

Some 1,500,000 voters, a quarter of the Socialists' 1963 total, defected from the Socialist ranks. In the Chamber of Deputies, that meant Nenni lost four seats, mostly to the Communists. The Communists picked up 800,000 votes, a 1.6% increase, giving them eleven extra seats in the Chamber. Thus the party maintained its postwar record of steady gains--and moved closer to its goal of a leftist majority in Italian politics. Other Nenni Socialists went over to their former ally, the pro-Communist Proletarian Socialists (P.S.I.U.P.). This far-left party gained 4.5% of the votes and 23 seats.

Rights for Women. The Communists had broadened their campaign appeal with a program promising reform rather than revolution, affluence rather than ideology. They emphasized the Center-Left's failures by promising similar measures themselves, such as a $50 monthly pension, rights for women, low-cost housing, a more efficient tax-collecting system. In foreign policy, they advocated withdrawal from NATO, but avoided calling for membership in the Moscow-run Warsaw Pact. They also won new voters among Catholics, arguing that Pope John's Vatican Council had liberated Catholics to vote Communist in good conscience if they wished.

For the present, Premier Aldo Moro's Center-Left coalition remains the only viable form of government in Italy, and Nenni's Socialists have gone too far in their partnership with Moro to reverse direction now. But the coalition's survival depends largely on a program reformist enough to restore confidence in the Socialists without undermining the Christian Democrats' and Republicans' new-found support from the right. A neat trick, if it can be done.

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